Hello everyone.

I've got a Canon BJC-50 portable that has given me five-plus years of
faithful service. That, however, hasn't been thanks to the
manufacturer. For one thing, they rewarded those of us who succumbed
to the allure of wireless infrared printing by not supporting this
feature in the Windows XP version of the driver. Result: upgrading to
XP or buying a new computer meant you couldn't print via infrared
anymore.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone out there heard of someone
sufficiently hacked off by this-and possessed of the requisite
programming skills-who has managed to devise a third-party driver that
restores this functionality? You'd think that Canon would have showed
a bit more loyalty to customers who were willing to shell out $350 for
one of these things, wouldn't you?

Failing that, does anyone know exactly what kind of connector that is
on the printer end of the parallel cable? Some descriptions I've read
call it a male 36-pin micro-Centronics connector, but I can only count
26 pins on it. Is there an adapter that will convert its female
counterpart on the printer into, say, a standard full-size 36-pin
female Centronics port, allowing not only the use of standard (and
cheaper) parallel printer cables, but enabling the connection of a
Wi-Fi or Bluetooth parallel printer server, thus allowing wireless
printing independent of whether Canon thinks it's worth supporting?

The e-mail address above is real, but messages to it aren't read.
Please respond in the group. Thanks in advance.

Well, I fixed the big problem, but I'm not sure how.

I found and installed the old BJ printer driver for Windows 9x, using
Windows XP's compatibility mode to run the installer in Windows 98/ME
mode. Then I installed another instance of the printer set to use the
infrared port, choosing NOT to use the existing driver when XP asked.
It's kind of clunky having to remember to choose another printer
whenever I want to print without the cable, but it's better than having
to haul it and a port replicator with a USB device cable along the next
time I want to print away from home.

By the way, the LB-51 battery Canon is selling for the i80 portable
printer also works in the BJC-50, and it provides quite a bit more
capacity than the original battery did (2000 mah as opposed to 1350).
I just picked one up from Buy.com for under $70. Looks like Santa
won't have to make room in the sleigh for an extra printer until next
year at the least.